This is Part 1 of a 3 part series. I’d like to thank Devin for allowing us to share this information on our site.
Really wish I could have gotten that to rhyme.
Link building is one of the top 3, if not the top, Google ranking factor that you need to master, systemize, and deploy consistently if you want your website to dominate search engines.
To master link building you must be well versed in content strategy, content creation, prospecting, domain quality evaluation, email, outreach, email outreach, conversation, negotiation, and resilience.
This article will cover high-level concepts about link building, while dropping some never before heard nuggets of gold, with the goal of getting you fully acclimated to understanding the 30,000-foot view of how link building works, why it’s important, and how to implement it into your agency, business, or SEO strategy.
This topic is a beast, so before we get into it – let’s kick off with a joke to keep the mood fun: What city in South Korea has the best search engine experts?…..SEOul
What is Link Building?
Link Building Definition: Link building (aka “link-building”, “linkbuilding”, or “backlinking”) is the process of getting other websites to hyperlink to your website, with the goal of improving the search engine rankings of your site.
Links are the primary method of navigation on the internet. They direct humans (and search engine crawlers) from one web page to another.
Humans (and search engines) inherently associate links as a signal of authority and trust.
For example, if Forbes.com writes an article that has a link to your website it is generally perceived as a recommendation to go and check out your business. Both humans and search engines consider a link like a “referral” or “recommendation” or “vote of confidence” from one site to another.
Getting links to your website is valuable for acquiring new traffic, audience building, developing relationships, and obviously SEO.
When other authoritative, trusted, and relevant (to your business) websites link to your website some of their “power” is transferred to your website.
This is called “getting a backlink”. The more websites that you can get to link to your website (assuming once again that they themselves are relevant and trusted) the more power your website will accumulate.
Why is Link Building So Important?
The original Google algorithm was based primarily on evaluating websites based on how many backlinks a website had from other sites on the internet.
Even though that was all the way back in 1998 and the algorithm has evolved a lot since then, having other websites link to you is still one of the top SEO ranking factors – by far.
The only difference is that today there are a lot more factors which us SEOs need to understand when acquiring links.
You don’t want a link from anyone.
You need to be strategic and selective about who you get links from, and this is the art & science of link building.
- Link building (done right) improves your domain’s authority, power & trust.
- Link building is a great way to get traffic from other websites to come to your website.
Just to drive this point home, here is what happens when you publish content on your website and then start link building.
About 3 months into our SEO campaign at the time of this screenshot.
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